Kamigami no Asobi: Episode 08-10 Review

Well, nothing can last forever. I hoped that while digging into the gods’ backstories, KamiAso would keep the same tone we’d seen earlier, with visual gags breaking up some of the tension, if nothing else. Last time, episode seven started to break from that pattern, but I still hoped—since Loki was involved—that they’d drag it back to a more mischievous tone, since the split ended on a bit of a cliffhanger.

Episode eight concludes Baldr’s storyline, which resolves in a way that casts a much darker patina over everything. I mentioned last time that KamiAso twists some of the myths to better fit a dating game, but it’s made so much clearer in these episodes—possibly because the writers felt they could get away with more once they left the Japanese pantheon. Personally, I know Greek and Norse mythology inside and out, so the deviations are especially obvious. There’s just something about making Baldr borderline yandere that doesn’t sit right with me.

Episode nine, Apollo’s arc, makes this even clearer. It takes the myth of Cassandra—the woman who was given the power of prophecy because Apollo wanted in her pants (or chiton, I guess), but after she rebuffed him, was cursed so no one would believe her warnings, leaving her unable to prevent the fall of Troy—and turns it into an excuse to explain why gods and humans can fall in love, even with the difference in lifespan.

Episode ten kind of takes us back, focusing on all of the gods as a group as they prepare for a school play—their “reward” for not failing their exams—and revealing that they are all absolutely terrible actors. The play, of course, completely falls apart and ends up as a mostly ad-libbed disaster (Thoth’s narration of Cinderella is the best I’ve ever heard) that goes even more out of control thanks to Loki and, unintentionally, Anubis. Honestly, this is the first episode I’ve enjoyed in a while. My only concern is that it’s the last light episode before the rest of the series finishes out more in line with episodes 7–9, with darker storylines, especially since episode ten ends with Baldr fainting.

I might’ve been wrong when I said they were setting up Yui with Apollo—endgame might pair Yui with Baldr (although it’s just as likely to be Loki/Baldr, with the way some of the conflict’s been set up). At this rate, I’m just hoping the last few episodes don’t try to drag everything down into an angst-fest. The setup for this series works so much better as a light-hearted joke.